Tag Archives: Katz Department Stores

The last child of Meier and Sprinzchen Katz to leave Germany was their son Aron, who had been his younger brother Karl’s partner in the cattle trading business in Jesberg.

The family of Aron Katz and Sara Leiser: rear, Julius, Aron, Jack; front, Sara.Courtesy of the family of Fred Katz

As noted in an earlier post, Aron’s son Jacob, known as Jack, had left Germany for the US in 1926 and was living with Jake Katz and his family in Stillwater in the 1930s, working in the Katz department store there.

Aron’s son Julius arrived on November 4, 1936, on the same ship as his cousin Moritz Katz, son of Moses Katz’s daughter Lena. Julius listed himself as a cattle trader and said he was headed to his uncle “Jakob” Katz in “Chillwater,” Oklahoma.

On February 22, 1939, Aron and his wife Sara finally arrived from Germany. Fred Katz told me that Aron had been quite resistant to leaving Germany, believing like so many others that things would not get too bad. Thank goodness Aron realized how wrong he was before it was too late. When the war in Europe started just a little over six months later, it became much more difficult for Jews to leave Germany.

Aron and Sara listed their son Jacob (Jack) Katz of Stillwater, Oklahoma, as the person who was receiving them, but handwritten in is the additional notation that they were also going to Aron’s brother Jake at the same address. Aron reported that he was a merchant.

In 1940, Aron and Sara were living in Stillwater like so many other members of the extended family.

As mentioned in the post about Walter and Max Katz, Aron and Sara’s older son Jack Katz was in the US Army during World War II and stationed for some time in Germany. Jack was 31 when he registered for the draft in October, 1940. He was living in Stillwater and working Katz Department Store there. I don’t know the details of his service other than what was described by Walter, but his draft card indicates that he was discharged on November 2, 1945.

After he returned home Jack married Helen Oppenheimer of Jackson, Missouri, on August 18, 1947.

Jack’s brother Julius registered for the draft in October, 1940. At the time he was living in Oklahoma City and listed his employer as Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty was a supermarket chain owned by Sylvan Goldman, the son-in-law of Jake Katz and husband of his daughter Margaret Katz. As I wrote previously, Sylvan and his brother Alfred had married the two daughters of Jake Katz, Margaret and Helen (respectively). The Goldman brothers were in the grocery business together.

After World War I… [Sylvan and] Alfred opened Goldman Brother’s Wholesale Fruits and Produce in Breckenridge, Texas. Years later, while living in California, Sylvan and Alfred were intrigued by a new type of grocery store that offered all products under one roof—the supermarket. The brothers returned to Oklahoma in order to bring this new way of shopping to their home state. With Sylvan serving as president and Alfred as vice president of Sun Grocery Company, they opened a store on April 3, 1920, at 1403 East Fifteenth Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One year later there were twenty-one Sun Grocery markets throughout the state.

In 1929 Sylvan and Alfred sold the Sun chain to Skaggs-Safeway Stores, and in 1934 Sylvan purchased the faltering Humpty-Dumpty grocery chain. The chain was revived in part due to Goldman’s revolutionary advertising and enlightened personnel policies. His greatest contribution was the shopping cart, invented in 1936 and patented by Goldman. He established the Folding Basket Carrier Company to manufacture his invention. It was just the beginning of a list of creations that revolutionized the grocery industry: the grocery sacker, the folding interoffice basket carrier, and the handy milk bottle rack.

The New York Times described Sylvan’s invention of the shopping cart in Sylvan’s 1984 obituary:

With help from a carpenter and a maintenance man, and with a folding chair as a model, he built the first grocery cart in the mid-1930’s. Shoppers were reluctant to use it, so Mr. Goldman hired people to push loaded carts back and forth in front of a store. He also hired a woman to offer the carts to customers as they entered. “Sylvan N. Goldman, 86, Dies; Inventor of the Shopping Cart,” The New York Times, November 27, 1984.

After Alfred Goldman died on July 9, 1937, while vacationing in New York City, Sylvan continued the business, and Julius Katz, Aron’s son, was working for him in the Oklahoma City store at the time he registered for the draft in 1940. More information about Sylvan Goldman can be found here, here,here, and in this video:

Julius Katz was still living in Oklahoma City in 1943 when he became a naturalized citizen. He listed his occupation as farming in 1937 when he filed his Declaration of Intent, but the Petition for Naturalization does not reveal what his occupation was at the time.

The marriage must not have lasted, however, because two years later in 1955, Seena is listed under her birth name in the Kansas City directory.

Julius died on August 7, 1963. According to his obituary, his body was discovered at his farm by his brother. The obituary described Julius as a “well-known Payne County farmer and rancher with operations north of Stillwater.” The only survivors mentioned were his mother and his brother Jack. “Funeral Services Slated Friday for Julius Katz, Stillwater Newspress, August 8, 1963, p. 8.

Aron’s wife Sarah died three years after her son at age 88 on December 18, 1966. She was survived by her son Jack, who died in Dallas, Texas, on August 27, 1997. He was 87 years old. Like his father, mother, and brother, he was buried in Fairlawn Cemetery in Stillwater.

Thus, all of the children of Meier Katz and Sprinzchen Jungenheim—Jake, Aron, Ike, Regina, and Karl and all their children—ultimately left Germany and settled safely in the United States, almost all of them in Oklahoma. Some came as early as the 1890s, other as late as the 1930s. As for those who came in the 1930s, it is tempting to think that it was a miracle that the entire family survived the Holocaust, but it was probably more a combination of luck, courage, and their own determined efforts and those of their family in America—especially those of Jake Katz—that got them out of Germany in time.

Albert Jerome Katz in rear, Helen Katz and Margaret “Babe” Katz seated with unknown cousins on lapsCourtesy of the Goldman family

Perhaps some Katz family member can identify the two unknown little cousins? Since we know Albert Jerome died in 1919, I am assuming this photo was taken in about 1918, meaning the two young children were likely born in 1916-1917. I am thinking one might be the daughter of Lester Katz and Mayme Salzenstein, Mildred “Bobbie,” since she was born in January 1916 and was related to Jake and Sophia on both sides, Lester being Jake’s cousin and Mayme being Sophia’s sister.

Family members tell me that after Albert Jerome died, Sophia did not want to continue living in the house where their son had lived, so Jake sold it to a sorority. After Sophia died, he bought the house back from the sorority. Family members recall his home as a family gathering place where children played hide and seek. There were frequent Sunday dinners where the extended family would come to visit, and Jake always had either a silver dollar or a Hershey’s kiss for every child. Jake’s great-niece Ester wrote about Jake and his role in saving the family on her blog, It’s All from Hashem in her post Thoughts of a Libra.

Jake Katz died on July 2, 1968, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He was 94 years old. His obituary made the front page of the Stillwater Newspress (July 3, 1968). [There is one error here; Sophia Salzenstein Katz did not die fifteen years after they were married; she died in 1930.]

Stillwater Newspress, July 3, 1968, p. 1Jake Katz obituary

Jake Katz was truly a remarkable man. He came to the US as a young teenager, traveling alone. He worked with family members until he was able to strike out on his own, and then he started a department store business that expanded over the years and ultimately supported many members of his extended family. He rescued several of his siblings and their children from Nazi Germany. And he did all of this despite suffering the tragic loss of his son Albert Jerome and the premature death of his wife. He is remembered with great love and admiration by many members of the family who knew him. It is quite a legacy.

His daughters Margaret and Helen survived him. Margaret died in 1984, followed just a few weeks later by her husband, the grocery store magnate and shopping cart inventor Sylvan Goldman. Helen died in 1999. Jake’s three grandsons also have passed away, but he is survived today by two great-grandchildren.

Now it is time to return to the story of the descendants of Rahel Katzenstein, sister of my great-great-grandfather Gerson Katzenstein. Rahel had married Jacob Katz, and they had had six children: Blumchen, Moses, Meier, Abraham, Sanchen, and Samuel. Thus far I have focused on the stories of Abraham and Samuel, both of whom came to the US as young men after the Civil War. Now I will turn to Meier Katz and his family.

As I wrote in my last post before we left for Germany, Meier Katz and Sprinzchen Jungheim had six children, five of whom survived to adulthood: Jacob, Aron, Seligmann, Regina, and Karl. Two of those children—Jacob (“Jake”) and Seligmann (known as “Isaac” or “Ike” in the US) came to the US as young men about twenty years after their uncles Abraham and Samuel; the other three siblings did not arrive until the 1930s after Hitler came to power.

Karl, Sprinzhchen, Regina, Jacob, Aron, Meier, and Isaac Katz

Jake, the oldest son, has taken on a legendary status in the family’s history.

Family lore is that he came to work as a clerk in a dry goods store in Winfield, Kansas, owned by his mother’s brother, Eli Jungheim (spelled Youngheim in the US). Jake is listed in the household of Eli Youngheim in the 1895 Kansas state census:

According to the Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Life, Eli Youngheim opened up a dry goods store in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1894, and hired Jake to run the store. The family story is that there was a falling out between Jake and his uncle Eli and that Jake turned to his father’s brother, Samuel Katz, who was then in Omaha, and obtained from him financial backing to start his own store in Stillwater in 1896.

Settlement in Stillwater, Oklahoma began during the 1889 land run. The first settlers lived in tents pitched next to the creek that gave the town its name and survived on hunted wild game. From these rustic beginnings, Stillwater quickly developed after it was named the seat of Payne County and the site of Oklahoma’s land grant college in 1890. Cotton was the main economic engine of the area, and Stillwater became a commercial and processing center for the cash crop. By the time Eli Youngheim opened a clothing store there in 1894, Stillwater had a water system, public schools, and a downtown filled with commercial buildings. Stillwater never had a formal Jewish congregation, but a small number of Jews have lived in Stillwater since the late 19th century.

By 1899, Jake was well settled in Stillwater; he became a naturalized citizen there on May 12, 1899.

The Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Lifestates that Jake’s younger brother Ike joined him in 1898 and helped him run the Stillwater store, which they named Katz Brothers. Ike, who was born Seligmann Katz in 1877, seems to have become Isaac or Ike in the US, arrived in the US on September 8, 1892. Here is his birth record from Jesberg as Seligmann:

My hunch is that Seligmann was his secular name in Germany, but that his Hebrew name was Isaac. He seems to have adopted Isaac/Ike as his first name once in the US. According to a ship manifest for a voyage Ike took in August, 1912, he was naturalized in October 9, 1899, in Oklahoma.

Jake was still single as of the time of the 1900 census, but according to the family he married Sophia Salzenstein in 1901. Sophia was the older sister of Mayme Salzenstein, who would later marry Jake’s first cousin Lester Katz, son of Abraham Katz. As I wrote in an earlier post, Wolf Salzenstein, father of Sophia and Mayme, was a German immigrant living in Athens, Illinois, working as a livestock dealer. His wife Caroline was born in Illinois, as were both Sophia and Mayme.

Jake and Sophia would have three children: Albert Jerome (1903), Helen (1904), and Margaret (1906). In 1910, they were living in Stillwater.

By 1910, Ike Katz also was married. On May 26, 1909, he married Sophia Weil in New York City. Sophia was also a German immigrant, born in Freiberg, Germany, which is not far from Jesberg. According to the family, this was an arranged marriage. In 1910, Ike and Sophia were living in Pawnee, Oklahoma, where Ike had established a second Katz Brothers store.

It was around this time that Jake contacted his uncle Abraham, who was still living in Kentucky, and asked him to move to Oklahoma to establish another Katz dry goods store. As I described in an earlier post, Abraham sent his oldest son, Lester, to Stillwater to work with Jake and explore the prospects of a store in another town in Oklahoma. In 1910, Abraham Katz and his family moved to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, and established another Katz store.

According to the family, in 1917, Ike decided to open a new Katz store in Oilton, Oklahoma. He asked his cousin Sidney Katz to run it for him. Sidney, who had recently married his wife Eulalia, had been operating a shoe store in Fort Scott, Kansas, in partnership with his brother-in-law Morris Kohlmann, but the business had not been profitable enough, so Sidney decided to accept Ike’s invitation to run a store in Oilton. Ike remained in Pawnee where on September 12, 1918, he registered for the World War I draft.

The family business was thus thriving in the first two decades of the 20th century, but then Jake and Sophia Katz suffered a terrible loss on October 6, 1919, when Albert Jerome Katz, their son and oldest child, died four days short of his sixteenth birthday.

After Abraham and Amelia Katz died, their children almost all continued to live and work in the same places in Oklahoma for most of the rest of their lives. They were all in some way connected with the dry goods business.

Rachel and Morris Kohlmann continued to live in Bristow, Oklahoma, until at least 1935, but by 1940, they were living in Oklahoma City where Morris owned a shoe store. By April, 1942, however, when Morris registered for the World War II draft, he and Rachel were living back in Louisville, Kentucky, where they had met and where Morris now owned a business called Jewel Cleaning and Dyers. [Thank you to Janice Webster Brown of Cow Hampshire Blog for pointing out that it says Dyers, not Dryers!]

Morris Kohlmann World War II draft registrationThe National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Draft Registration Cards for Fourth Registration for Kentucky, 04/27/1942 – 04/27/1942; NAI Number: 7644732; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147

Morris died in Louisville five years later on April 10, 1947; he was 67 years old. His death certificate states that he was a shoe salesman at the time of his death.

Lester Katz, the oldest brother, had remained in Sapulpa where he was the owner and manager of the family department store there.

Lester Katz World War II draft registrationThe National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Draft Registration Cards for Fourth Registration for Oklahoma, 04/27/1942 – 04/27/1942; NAI Number: 576250; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 14

This wonderful photograph shows the five sons of Abraham and Amelia (Nahm) Katz probably sometime in the 1950s:

Ben, Sidney, Mickey, Sigmund and Lester Katzcourtesy of the Katz family

Lester died in Sapulpa on January 17, 1959; he was 73 years old. The Sapulpa Historical Society sent me a copy of his obituary, but it does not identify the paper in which it appeared. According to the obituary, Lester had had heart issues prior to his death. It reported that he had died from a heart attack and had been found by his brother M.J. (Milton) lying on the floor in the family’s store. The obituary also stated that Lester had been active in several civic organizations and that “he was perhaps as well known in this section as any local merchant.”

Lester’s wife Mayme died almost seven years later on December 2, 1965. They were survived by their daughters.

Sidney and his brother Ben continued to run the Katz Department Store in Ada, Oklahoma, where they both lived.

Sidney Katz World War II draft registrationThe National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Draft Registration Cards for Fourth Registration for Oklahoma, 04/27/1942 – 04/27/1942; NAI Number: 576250; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147

Notice that Sidney listed Ben as the person who would always know his address, and Ben did the same on his draft registration:

Ben Katz World War II draf registrationThe National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Draft Registration Cards for Fourth Registration for Oklahoma, 04/27/1942 – 04/27/1942; NAI Number: 576250; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147

The family described to me the special relationship between Ben and Sidney. They worried about each other and always looked out for each other’s best interests. When Sidney decided to retire, he tried to reduce the inventory in the store so it would cost Ben less to buy him out; Ben, worried that Sidney would not have enough to live on after selling his share, arranged for the inventory to be rebuilt so that he would have to pay Sidney more. That is a remarkable partnership and relationship—to put family before business and before your own interests.

Here is a photograph of Ben and his wife Sadie and their three children, Henry, Bryna, and Alfred, taken in about 1933:

Sadie, Ben, Henry, Bryna, and Alfred Katz c. 1933

The Katz Department Store in Ada during the 1940s on Rodeo Day:

Ada, Oklahoma 1940sCourtesy of the Katz family

Sidney and Ben and other unidentified people in the Ada Katz Department Store:

Katz Department Store in Ada, OK with Sidney and Ben KatzCourtesy of the Katz Family

An advertisement for the Ada store published in the Ada Evening News on March 15, 1953:

Ada Evening News, March 15, 1953

Sidney Katz died in 1961. In another unlabeled obituary I received from the Sapulpa Historical Society, Sidney was described as “universally loved and respected on Main Street by his fellow businessmen and by the hundreds of people he knew in his long career here. He was a man of great energy. He liked people and gave constantly and unselfishly of his time to a host of civic and community projects.” The obituary also noted that he enjoyed golf. Sidney was survived by his wife Eulalia, who died in 1972.

Sidney Katz, photograph from 1961 obituary

Courtesy of FindAGrave member Linda Abelli (#48304482)

Ben died just five years after his brother Sidney on March 25, 1966. He was 73 years old and was survived by his wife Sadie and their three children. His obituary appeared on the first page of the Ada Weekly News of March 25, 1966:

Courtesy of FindAGrave member Jackie (#46788388)

His wife Sadie died in 1983; she was 86. Here is a photograph of Ben and Sadie with their granddaughter Marsha.

After Ben died, his two sons Alfred and Henry took over the Ada store, which they ran until 2004 when they retired. Following are photographs of the store in Ada:

The family lost two siblings in 1972. In July, Blanche died in a nursing home in Sapulpa; she was 89 years old and, as far as I can tell, had never worked outside the home or married. Six months later on December 27, 1972, Florence Katz Frisch died in Sapulpa. Her husband Sol Frisch had died in 1943; they had been living in Stillwater, Oklahoma at that time, but sometime after Sol’s death, Florence returned to Sapulpa. Florence had also been predeceased by her only child, Sara Jean Frisch Looney, who died on August 19, 1966, at age 44 from a brain tumor.

Milton Katz, who was known as Mickey, had returned to Sapulpa in 1944 after spending some time in the east in the construction business, according to a 1973 profile of him in the Sapulpa newspaper. When he returned, he joined his brother Lester in the Sapulpa store. Milton married Ruth Billingslea on February 24, 1951, in Benton, Arkansas. Ruth was a widow when she married Milton; she was 48, and he was 49. Ruth was born in Oklahoma and had been living in Chickasha, the town where Milton’s sister Henrietta lived. Milton and Ruth lived in Sapulpa where, according to Ruth’s obituary in the Sapulpa Herald of Friday, July 9, 2004, she assisted Milton in the Katz Department Store

According to the 1973 article (for which I unfortunately do not have a full citation), Mickey was quite a character, especially in his youth. The article described how he had purchased rain insurance for a Sapulpa high school football game and collected when it rained .3 inches; then he had managed to get the game played anyway by having the field burnt and purchasing cleats for the players.

Milton “Mickey” Katz died in Sapulpa in April 1983 when he was 81 years old; according to his obituary (another unlabeled one I received from the Sapulpa Historical Society), he had served as president of the Chamber of Commerce, the Jaycees, and the Kiwanis Club and as chairman of the Sapulpa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission and of Sapulpa Flood Control. His wife Ruth survived him by 21 years. She died in 2004 when she was 101 years old.

Photo of Mickey Katz from 1973 article in Sapulpa newspaper

The last two surviving siblings, Henrietta and Sigmund, both lived long lives. Henrietta and her husband Ben Levine had remained in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Ben died in Chickasha on January 2, 1960 at age 71. Henrietta remained in Chickasha, where she died 28 years later in June, 1988, at age 93; she was survived by her three children. Ben is buried between Henrietta, his second wife, and her older sister Bertha, his first wife.

Photo by P Black-Avitts (#46910889) of FindAGrave

Sigmund was then the last living child of Abraham and Amelia Katz, but he only survived Henrietta by eight months. He died on February 24, 1989. Sigmund and his wife Elizabeth had remained in Bristow, Oklahoma, until at least 1942. In 1940, Sigmund was still working as a merchant, but on his World War II draft registration in 1942, he reported that he was not employed.

Sigmund Katz World War II draft registrationThe National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Draft Registration Cards for Fourth Registration for Oklahoma, 04/27/1942 – 04/27/1942; NAI Number: 576250; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147

According to his obituary in the Sapulpa Herald of February 26, 1989, “Mr. Katz worked at the Bristow store from 1922-1941 then associated with the Oklahoma State Employment Service. He resided in Sapulpa from 1952 until 1985, when he moved to Tulsa.” Sigmund died in Tulsa on February 24, 1989; he was 92 years old. Elizabeth lived another three years, dying in Tulsa on April 8, 1992; she was 93. They were survived by their two daughters.

Together, Abraham and Amelia Katz had ten children, eleven grandchildren, and a large number of great and great-great-grandchildren, a number of whom still live in Oklahoma while others are spread throughout the United States. And I am so fortunate to have been able to find and connect with a number of them. I am particularly grateful to my cousins Marsha and Henry for generously sharing the photographs and allowing me to share them with you.

In my last twoposts, I wrote about Abraham Katz and the decision he made in 1910 to move his family from Louisville, Kentucky to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, where business opportunities seemed more promising for him and his children. By 1920, Abraham Katz and his large family were well-established in Oklahoma. Four of the ten children were married, one, Bertha, had died at a tragically young age, and five of the ten children were still living at home.

During the 1920s, four of the other Katz children married. Florence, who had been living at home in 1920, had married by 1921. Her husband was Solomon Frisch, who was born in Springfield, Illinois, but grew up in Athens, Illinois, the same town where Lester Katz’s wife Mayme had grown up. Solomon was the son of Isaac and Sophia Frisch, who were immigrants from Hungary and Germany, respectively; Isaac was a bookkeeper. In 1917 when he registered for the World War I draft, Solomon had his own store in Athens.

Florence and Sol must have married not long after the 1920 census, as their daughter Sarah Jean was born on November 18, 1921. In 1930, they were living in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Sol was working as a dry goods merchant. Stillwater was, as mentioned in an earlier post, the town where Abraham Katz’s nephew (and Florence’s first cousin) Jake was also a dry goods merchant, and Sol was working with Jake in Stillwater in the Katz Department Store.

Benjamin Katz also married in the 1920s. His wife, Sadie Bardine, was the daughter of two Russian immigrants, Isaac and Molly Bardine; Sadie was born in Kansas City, Missouri, where she grew up. In 1920, she was working as a stenographer in a law office. Sadie and Ben were married on June 12, 1924, in Kansas City.

According to the Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Life published by the Goldring Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, “Sadie came from an Orthodox family and found it very daunting to adapt to her husband’s classical Reform Judaism and the difficulty of finding kosher meat in Sapulpa. She lived with Ben in Sapulpa from 1924 until 1926, when Ben decided that a life as a shoe clerk was not enough.”

It was at that point that Ben and Sadie moved to Ada, Oklahoma where in 1926, Ben and his brother Sidney purchased a long-established department store together in Ada, as reported in the April 15, 1926, issue of the Ada Weekly News (p. 4):

A deal will be closed today in which one of Ada’s oldest department stores changes hands and tomorrow morning, unless present plans go amiss, Simpson’s will open its doors under the banner of Katz Department Store.

Sidney and Ben Katz will be in charge of the store here, having arrived here several days ago from Bristow, where they made their home for six years. …

Although the new owners of the store establish this store here as another link to the chain of stores they operate in the Southwest, their desire is to impress the public with their public spirit in the interest and advancement of the town. …

An extensive and commendable news article in a Bristow paper deplored the loss of Sidney Katz from its business fraternity. “Sidney Katz has been in Bristow for the past six years coming here to open the Bristow store. During the time he has been a resident of this city, he has been one of the liveliest workers the city has had. He has had a part in every worth while [sic] move that Bristow civic organizations have made, and members of the organizations say that his loss as a citizen will be felt.

Ben and Sidney ran the store together in Ada for many years. More on that to come.

Abraham and Amelia’s youngest daughter Henrietta also married in the 1920s. She married her sister Bertha’s widower, Ben Levine, on June 28, 1925. In 1930, they were living with their first two children in Chickasha, Oklahoma, where Ben was (guess) a dry goods merchant.

Chickasha is 134 miles from Sapulpa. According to the Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities published by the Goldring Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, in 1919, Chickasha had a Jewish population of about 125 people. The Encyclopedia reports that, “By far the most prominent and long lasting Jewish business in Chickasha was the Dixie Store, owned by friends and distant cousins Charles I. Miller and Ben Levine. Charles and Ben had opened the store in 1919, and “Charles and Ben became icons in the Chickasha community, running a newspaper ad for their department store every day for over 50 years.”

When Sigmund Katz married Elizabeth Pattison on September 23, 1926, he was the fourth child of Abraham and Amelia to marry since 1920. His wife Elizabeth was the daughter of William Pattison and Ersula Wade. Her father was born in Ohio, and her mother in Tennessee, where Elizabeth was also born. In 1900, when Elizabeth was four, the family was living in Florence, Alabama, where William was a lumber dealer. By 1920, however, Elizabeth’s father had died, and she and her mother were living with her grandparents in Allen, Oklahoma, where Elizabeth was working as a public school teacher. Allen is only 19 miles from Ada, where Sigmund’s brothers Ben and Sidney were living.

In 1930, Sigmund and Elizabeth were living with their first two children in Bristow, Oklahoma, where Sigmund’s sister Rachel was also living. And yes, Sigmund was also a dry goods merchant.

Rachel and her husband Morris Kohlmann were still living in Bristow in 1930, where Morris continued to work as a dry goods merchant; they had no children. Lester and his wife Mayme and their children were living in Sapulpa, and Lester was also a dry goods merchant, working in the family store. Sidney and his wife Eulalia were living in Ada, Oklahoma, where Sidney was the manager of a dry goods store with his brother Ben, as noted above; Sidney and Eulalia did not have children.

By 1930 then, Abraham and his wife (listed as Millie here) were living with only two of their nine surviving children, Blanche and Milton, their youngest child, who was then 28. Abraham, who was now 79 years old, was still working as a merchant, and Milton was working as a clerk in the family store with his father and brother Lester.. Blanche was not employed outside the home, nor was her mother.

Thus, by 1930, Abraham and his sons and sons-in-law had established quite a number of dry goods stores in various towns in Oklahoma.

Abraham J. Katz died on July 29, 1936, at age 85. According to the records of the funeral home, he died of uremic poisoning and heat prostration.

Funeral record of Abraham Katz

The Sapulpa Herald of July 30, 1936, reported his death on its first page:

According to the obituary, Abraham died at home in Sapulpa after being critically ill for two weeks. The obituary also reported that Abraham had lived in Sapulpa since August, 1910, the first time I’ve seen the date so specifically pinpointed. The obituary also commented that “Mr. Katz has always been one of the communities [sic] most generous donors to charity. He is well known for his philanthropies here throughout the years. He has been a member of the Chamber of Commerce for years as well as other local booster organizations.”

Abraham was survived by his wife Amelia, nine of their ten children, and eleven grandchildren.

In 1940, Amelia, who was then 80, was living in Sapulpa with two of her children: Blanche, who was 56 and not employed, and Milton, who was 38 and working as a clerk in Katz Department Store.

Amelia died in Sapulpa on June 16, 1944; she was 84 years old. The Sapulpa Herald of June 17, 1944, reported her death on its first page, describing her as a “well known local woman.” She and Abraham were buried together at Fairlawn Cemetery in Oklahoma City.

Photo by FindAGrave member P Black Avitts (#46910889)

Abraham Katz, who came to the US as a teenager shortly after the Civil War and started as a dry goods merchant in a small town in Kentucky, left behind quite a legacy for his children and their descendants. He and his family had established a series of department stores spread over a number of cities and towns in Oklahoma that would continue to support the family long after Abraham was gone, as we will see in the next post.

As we saw in my last post, sometime around 1910, Abraham and Amelia moved with their ten children from Kentucky to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, where Abraham had been encouraged to move by his nephew Jake Katz to expand the Katz dry goods business. Between 1910 and 1920, four of Abraham and Amelia’s children married and left home and several others went to college or served in the military during those years.

Here is a photograph of Abraham and Amelia and their children taken about ten years after the one I posted in my last post. Using Milton, the youngest child, as my clue, I think he looks about thirteen in this photograph, meaning it was taken around 1914. I know it was taken before 1919, for reasons revealed below.

Henry Katz, Abraham and Amelia’s grandson, identified the family members in this photograph. They are, in the front row from left to right, Henrietta, Amelia, Abraham, Milton, and Bertha. In the back row from left to right are Ben, Florence, Lester, Blanche, Sidney, Rachel, and Sigmund.

Rachel, the first-born of the ten children, married Morris Kohlmann on June 12, 1912 in Louisville. Morris was born in Germany and had immigrated in 1892, according to the 1900 census. In 1900 and 1910, Morris had been living in Louisville with his parents. According to this January 1, 1917 article from the Daily Tribune and Daily Mirror of Fort Scott, Kansas, Rachel and Morris had lived in El Dorado Springs, Missouri:

In 1917 when he registered for the World War I draft, Morris reported that he and Rachel were living in Yale, Oklahoma, a small town about 45 miles west of Sapulpa where he owned a store.

On the 1920 census, Rachel and Morris were living in Bristol, Oklahoma, which is about 25 miles southwest of Sapulpa. Morris reported that he was the owner of a department store.

Rachel’s brother Lester Katz married Mayme Salzenstein just two months after Rachel married Morris—on August 12, 1912, in Chicago. Mayme was the daughter of Wolf Salzenstein, a German immigrant, and his wife Caroline, who was born in Illinois. Mayme was also an Illinois native, and her father was a livestock dealer in Athens, Illinois, a small town not far from Springfield, Illinois. Mayme moved with Lester to Sapulpa, where according to his World War I draft registration, he was a self-employed merchant. I was unable to locate Lester and Mayme on the 1920 census, but I know from other records that by 1920, they had two daughters, Mildred and Bertha Barbara.

When Abraham and Amelia’s second oldest son, Sidney Katz, registered for the World War I draft, he was living in Oilton, Oklahoma, a small town about 34 miles west of Sapulpa. According to his draft registration, Sidney was working for Katz Department Store. He was single at that time, but on September 1, 1918, he married Eulalia V Woolsey, who was born in Missouri but had been living with her family in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1910. Her father owned a music store there.

Apparently the family had some continuing connection to Fort Scott, Kansas, because I found this article about Bertha Katz, the seventh of Abraham and Amelia’s children, in the Fort Scott newspaper, reporting on her marriage to Ben Levine in Sapulpa in January 1918:

Ben Levine was born in Russia and had lived in Dayton, Ohio, after immigrating with his parents in 1890, but in 1910 he was living in Mountain View, Oklahoma, with his mother and his siblings and working as the manager of a dry goods store. In 1917 he reported on his World War I draft registration that he had his own store in Cordell, Oklahoma.

Tragically, Ben’s marriage ended rather soon as Bertha Katz died in December 1918, according to her headstone and the family. She was only 28 years old. According to the family, Bertha went to meet Ben in New York City when he was being discharged from the military. While there, she contracted the flu and died in New York, one of the many millions of victims of the flu epidemic of that time. What a heartbreaking loss that must have been.

Finally, the fifth Katz child who was not living with his family in 1920 was Sigmund, the second youngest son. According to the family, Sigmund attended what was then Oklahoma A & M in Stillwater and majored in Animal Husbandry. One family legend is that he operated on a duck and mistakenly reattached his leg backwards, causing the duck to swim in circles! (This sounds like more of a family joke than true, but nevertheless part of the family lore.)

On his draft registration card dated June 1918, he reported that he was a student and was living with his family in Sapulpa. (Interestingly, his draft registration reports his birthdate as August 5, 1897, but every other record, including his World War II draft registration says he was born a year earlier—August 5, 1896.) Sigmund enlisted in the US Army on October 1, 1918, and was discharged on December 16, 1918. He would have been 22 years old. But where was he in 1920?

Although I could not find any Sigmund Katz on the 1920 census, I did find this record of a Sidney Katz, born in Kentucky in 1896, who was living in Louisville and working in the dry goods business. Since I already had a correct 1920 census record for Sigmund’s older brother Sidney, I knew this was not for him. The only thing, aside from the incorrect first name, that is inconsistent with this being Sigmund Katz is that it reports that “Sidney’s” parents were born in Russia. Perhaps his landlady gave the information to the enumerator and assumed his parents were Russian born? What do you think?

As for the rest of the family, in 1920, Abraham was still working as a dry goods merchant in Sapulpa, and he and his wife Amelia still had the other five of their ten children living with them: Blanche (27), Florence (25), Ben (23), Henrietta (21), and Milton (18). Henrietta went to Oklahoma A & M like Sigmund where she’d been a member of the Theta sorority. In 1920, she was working as a school teacher.

Ben served in the US Army during World War I, as shown in this photograph:

Ben KatzCourtesy of the Katz family

In 1920, Ben was working in a shoe store.

Milton, the youngest child, had served as the manager of the high school football team and was known by everyone in Sapulpa. He attended the University of Illinois. He then came home and worked in the family store in Sapulpa.

Thus, as of 1920, Abraham Katz and all his sons and even his sons-in-law were in the dry goods business. Four of his children had married, but sadly one, their daughter Bertha, had died shortly after her marriage. Five of the other children were still living at home, and Sigmund may have been living and working in Louisville, where he was born. But in the next decade, most of those five children would also marry and move out on their own.

Like this:

I’ve learned a lot more information about Abraham Katz and his family since connecting with my fourth cousin Marsha and her father Henry. They also generously shared some family photographs with me. What a blessing it has been!

According to family history notes written by Abraham’s grandson Henry in September, 1988, when Abraham arrived in the US, he lived in Baltimore with a family named Gump who were cousins of his mother (Rahel Katzenstein). I knew this had to be the same Gumps who were married to my Mansbach cousins, the children of Hannchen Katzenstein Mansbach, who was a sister of both Rahel Katzenstein Katz, Abraham’s mother, and my great-great-grandfather Gerson Katzenstein.

And sure enough, I went back to look at the research I’d done about the Gump family, and there was Abraham, living with Gabriel and Henrietta (Mansbach) Gump in Baltimore on the 1870 census:

According to the family history notes written by Henry Katz, Abraham lived with the Gumps in Baltimore for about two years and learned English and bookkeeping. Then he left for New Orleans where there was another family member. The family does not know the name of that family member (there were no Gumps then living in New Orleans), but family lore is that Abraham was searching for an older brother who had fought in the Civil War and might have gone to New Orleans to look for him. He never found that brother, and I have no records regarding this brother. (More on that in a later post.) While in New Orleans, Abraham chased after a man who was attempting to steal from the family’s business and injured his knee, an injury that affected him for the rest of his life.

After some time in New Orleans, Abraham moved to Horse Cave, Kentucky, married Amelia Nahm, and had ten children, as I’ve described in an earlier post. Here is a photograph of the family home in Horse Cave and one of Amelia:

Katz home in Horse Cave, Kentucky Courtesy of the Katz family

Amelia Nahm Katz, courtesy of the Katz family

The family history notes described Abraham’s business in Horse Cave:

He carried dry goods, hardware, buggies, and Studebaker wagons. A water well was in the center of his store. He would barter with the farmers for their products. He would store eggs and dairy products in a basket in the well. He later established a second store.

(Henry Katz family history notes, September 30, 1988)

According to the family history notes, when Abraham and Amelia moved their family from Horse Cave to Louisville sometime before 1900, it was to be closer to an established Jewish community. All ten children were living at home in Louisville in 1900, as seen in this census record:

In Louisville, Abraham operated a dry goods store as well as a glove factory, according to the family history notes.

Thanks to the generosity of Abraham’s great-granddaughter Marsha, I now have a photograph of Abraham and Amelia and nine their ten children. As best I can tell from the ages and birth order of the children, either Lester or Sidney is missing from this photograph. Since the youngest child, Milton, was born in 1901 and appears to be about five years old in the photo, I am guessing that this photograph was taken in about 1906—before the family left Kentucky.

My guess is that the back row standing are the two oldest sisters, Rachel and Blanche, with either Lester or Sidney between them. In the front row from left to right would be Henrietta, Abraham, Ben, Bertha, Florence, Milton, Sigmund, and Amelia:

UPDATE! Thank you so much to Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, the Photo Genealogist, upon whose expertise I have relied before. Ava advised me that the clothing styles date this photograph as more like 1900-1901. Thus, the “missing” child would have been Milton, who wasn’t yet born. I now think that I was wrong in my identification of the children in the photograph. Looking at the ages of the children again, I now think that in fact they should be identified as follows:

When a recession hit the region around 1908, Abraham’s business was affected, and he faced labor problems in his glove factory. The family history notes go on to describe how Abraham decided to leave Louisville:

During this time his nephews Jake and Ike Katz [to be discussed in a later post] … were enjoying good business in their store in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Oklahoma had become a state in 1907, and things were booming. … Abe sent Lester [his oldest son] to Oklahoma to visit his cousins in Stillwater to survey the situation to see if the family would not be better off in a new state.

(Henry Katz family history notes, September 30, 1988)

Lester reported back favorably, but as of 1910, Abraham, Amelia, and eight of their ten children were still living in Louisville, and Abraham was still a merchant in the dry goods business. The children at home ranged in age from 27 down to eight.

And Lester was living in Stillwater, Oklahoma, working as a salesman in a dry goods store. Also boarding with Lester in Stillwater was Lafayette Rothschild, who was Samuel Katz’s brother-in-law and also working as a salesman in a dry goods store. Both Lester and Lafayette were probably working in the Katz Department Store belonging to Jake Katz.

Not long after the 1910 census, Abraham Katz and his family moved to Oklahoma, settling in Sapulpa, a town about 15 miles from Tulsa.

Why Sapulpa? Between 1900 and 1910, the population of Sapulpa had exploded, going from 891 people to 8,283 people; by 1920, it was up to 11,634 people. During that time, industry had begun to develop in Sapulpa, including brick and glass manufacturing. Presumably, Abraham and his nephew Jake saw this as a growing community in need of a dry goods store.